Written by https://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com . Former State Teacher of the Year (New York) Get a free article, "Advice from Harvard: 10 Skills for Success in the Global Economy"John is "The World's Most Respected Teacher." RON PAUL wrote the Foreword to his NEW Book. 2015 Release! www.JohnTaylorGatto.com "The Underground History of American Education". He is the former State Teacher of the Year (New York, 1991)

Joy Reid claims a recent batch of screenshots appearing to show homophobic statements on her now-defunct blog are “fraudulent” and the result of a cyberattack.

However, several aspects of the cyberattack claim seem highly questionable.

The host of MSNBC’s “AM Joy” came under fire this week after a Twitter user shared screenshots of anti-LGBTQ content Reid had seemingly written between 2005 and 2009 for her old blog, The Reid Report.

Reid apologized in December for writing homophobic posts about former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (D) between 2007 and 2009 after Twitter user @Jamie_Maz shared screenshots of the posts.

Last week, @Jamie_Maz tweeted dozens more screenshots, also allegedly from Reid’s old blog, that included statements such as “most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing” and “adult gay men tend to be attracted to very young, post-pubescent types.”

The can has been kicked a little farther down the road. When President Trump in October approved the release of previously classified or redacted documents on the JFK assassination, he blocked the release of others over national security concerns and gave federal agencies 180 days to re-review the withheld documents. The review in some cases turned up "identifiable national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns," per a memo written by Trump, who on Thursday said some files would now be kept under wraps until Oct. 26, 2021.

My generation endured fear of the draft because disinformation helped drag our country into a terrible war. That conflict was Vietnam, and the agitprop used to conjure consent for military assaults on Syria now gives me deja vu.

Back in 1972, as a 19-year-old Australian male, I was required to register for the ballot to determine conscription for Vietnam, where my country was allied with the US and South Vietnam against the Vietcong and North Vietnam.

I turned 65 in March. And that's a landmark which can inspire a bit of reflection. Anyway, back in that final teenage year, I hadn't registered, and I wasn't going to. However, had Gough Whitlam's Australian Labor Party not won the election that year, I would have been a draft resister – a stance which would have had surely led to consequences.

A doctor from the Douma hospital, also participating at the conference as a witness, said that what happened on April 7 is not corresponding with what was shown in the media. People were arriving at the hospital suffering from asphyxiation, not from a chemical attack. This was due to smoke inhalation from a nearby building that had been bombed. According to him, medical personnel were treating them when the White Helmets came in, claiming that there had been a chemical attack. He saw them creating hysteria in the hospital, but didn't believe them, as none of the staff saw signs of chemical poisoning. According to him, all their patients went home the same day.

Official Washington and those associated with it have misrepresented the facts numerous times in the service of military actions that might not otherwise have taken place. In the Middle East, these interventions have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Arab civilians, brought chaos to Iraq and Libya, and led to the expulsion of a million Christians from communities where they have lived since biblical times.

The most famous of these episodes, of course, was the U.S. government’s assurance to the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which formed the basis for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The government also insisted Saddam had ties to al-Qaeda, bolstering the call to war. Of course neither was true.

Several Israeli news sites published a satellite photograph on Tuesday April 17 that they said showed an Iranian military airfield inside Syria. But in fact the photograph showed Mehrabad International Airport in the Iranian capital Tehran.

The Jerusalem Post published a satellite photograph with a caption saying it showed proof of Iranian military involvement in Syria. It said the photograph was one of three released by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman’s unit Tuesday morning.

Roger Stone counters the DNC lawsuit by saying the server need to be protected during discovery. Text message are going to be revealed between Strzok and Page. North Korea shuts down speaker system after South does it first.

Having already violated every tenet of international law in its proxy jihadist war against Syria, including the seizure of one-third of the country, the United States invoked a Non-Law, a Law That Never Was, to justify its missile strikes against fictitious “chemical warfare” facilities. Syrian President Assad “kills his own people,” said Trump, leader of the nation whose police kill more of its “own people” than any country except (fellow white settler state) Brazil, and whose prisons entomb one-quarter of all the world’s inmates. (One out of every eight prisoners on the planet is an African American.)

In accordance with President Trump’s direction on October 26, 2017, the National Archives today posted 19,045 documents subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act). Released documents are available for download. The versions released today were processed by agencies in accordance with the President’s direction that agency heads be extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Well, that explains the story below where a "new" analysis claims Oswald acted alone.

Image of Yaser Murtaja after he was shot April 6, 2018, at the Gaza fence, from video by Sana Kassem posted by Norman Finkelstein.
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Check out this stirring anthem to freedom in Gaza. It begins with a Palestinian child saying “We shall overcome” and an image of Martin Luther King Jr. and then in many still pictures of the “Great March of Return” conveys the strength of the unarmed resistance to the blockade–including the killing of Yaser Murtaja, the Palestinian journalist who was one of six Palestinian journalists shot by Israeli snipers on April 6.

The imagery is by Sana Kassem, and the video was posted by Norman Finkelstein yesterday on youtube. The song is “Wings to Fly,” by Susan Boyle. The copy accompanying the video was simply: “A video dedicated to the people of Gaza as they struggle to break out of Israel’s infernal prison.”

Then Youtube took it down today, Finkelstein says, and he and Kassem have posted it now on Vimeo.

In an unabated attack on vaccine science and public health, two world renowned scientists who discovered contaminants in common vaccines have recently had their home raided and much of the documentation of their findings confiscated.

In the wake of the world famous rapper Kanye West Tweeting in support of Candace Owens and Scott Adams, the leftist media has attacked all three of them. The most vicious attacks have been after Scott Adams, who is most known for creating the “Dilbert” comic strip.

There has still been no retraction or correction of The Guardian‘s demonstrably false and completely indefensible claim that two normal antiwar Twitter accounts were controlled not by real people but by bot programs based in Russia. This is the sort of environment that has been created by the ongoing Russia panic that is plaguing the western world: one wherein mainstream news outlets can openly lie about dissenting voices and antiwar activists, refuse to retract or apologize for those lies, and suffer no consequences.

doctors and eyewitnesses say the alleged “poison gas attack” in Douma—in response to which the U.S. fired 105 Tomahawk missiles on three Syrian targets—never happened. The real question: Who benefits from drawing the U.S. into yet another no-win war?

One thing is for certain. People today believe anything but reality and that will catch up to them all very soon in a very painful way. Things work until they don’t. Our economy has been rolling along for decades on the stored wealth of previous generations but that is about to run out of steam very soon. When it does it will be a shock to all but a few. You can ignore reality but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.

This is a government that treats its citizens like faceless statistics and economic units to be bought, sold, bartered, traded, tracked, tortured, and eventually eliminated once they’ve outgrown their usefulness. -- This is a government that treats human beings like lab rats to be caged, branded, experimented upon, and then discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects. -- This is a government that repeatedly lies, cheats, steals, spies, kills, maims, enslaves, breaks the laws, overreaches its authority, and abuses its power at almost every turn. --This is a government that wages wars for profit, jails its own people for profit, and then turns a blind eye and a deaf ear while its henchmen rape and kill and pillage. -- No, this is not a government that can be trusted to do what is right or moral or humane or honorable but instead seems to gravitate towards corruption, malevolence, misconduct, greed, cruelty, brutality and injustice.

This is not a coincidence, especially when considering Google was the Clinton campaign’s largest corporate contributor. Google employees, including at least six high-ranking executives, donated more than $1.3 million to Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Call it censorship or manipulation, but the truth is…Google attempted to rig the election for Hillary Clinton by manipulating searches and suggestions, and therefore, voters minds.

Recently, I received an email from U.S. Senator Rand Paul regarding an issue which may upset, or be near and dear to, the hearts of many Americans; it stated the USA taxpayer is the second largest DIRECT financial funder of the U.N.’s global gun ban! Did you know that? Of course, most people probably don’t, and such information is one of the reasons I’ve been saying for umpteen years, “Get the USA out of the UN; get the UN out of the USA.”

It matters because first, it removes one more “talking point” used by anti-gunners to defend their intention to remove firearms from every law-abiding gun owner in the country. Second, it confirms that government agencies cannot be trusted without verification. Third, it is one more argument in the arsenal of those promoting private gun ownership to those who haven’t yet made up their minds.

While the world's attention is riveted on Syria, the US is significantly boosting its forces in Europe. And these are not just divisions streaming in to take part in some exercises that will leave once those are over. This is a serious buildup to create a potentially offensive posture. The beefing up of the US forces is taking place amid preparations for a Russia-US summit. That’s a rather peculiar background for the event, to put it mildly!

Armenia is an important part Russia’s long-term plans. A member of the Eurasian Economic Union Armenia is key to protecting Russia’s southern flank.

So, I was not shocked back in 2016 when the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh was activated by the U.S. after a brief visit by then Secretary of State John Kerry as punishment for Russia’s intervention into Syria.

Nagorno-Karabakh had been peaceful for more than twenty years before Kerry’s visit. And within days, fighting broke out on the Azeri side of the region which lies between the two countries.

So, color me not shocked that as the Neoconservatives take control of the Trump White House that they activate a color revolution in Armenia while simultaneously pushing Russia in Ukraine, Syria, the U.K., the financial markets and seemingly everywhere else at the same time.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The flash points for several potential hot wars are tinder for the kerosine being thrown on them, courtesy of the US and the West.

As concerns about nuclear war with North Korea wane, Taiwan is reminding the world that its own relations with Beijing have been progressively deteriorating; to do that the small island nation will simulate a response to an "invading force", along with using civilian operated drones, in war games next week amid its increasing tensions with China the defense ministry said Tuesday according to Reuters.

While the annual Han Kuang drills, set to begin on April 30 with a computer-aided command post exercise, make no mention of China, only “offensive forces invading Taiwan” and will include a live-fire field training exercise and “enemy elimination on beaches”, it is clear that the "hypothetical" aggressor is China.

Britain has approved the sale of arms to Israel worth $445m since the 2014 Gaza war, including components for drones, combat aircraft and helicopters along with spare parts for sniper rifles, according to figures seen by Middle East Eye.

The government data will raise fresh concerns that British-made weapons are being used by the Israeli military in the Occupied Territories, amid fears that components in sniper rifles used to kill scores of Palestinian civilians in recent weeks could have been made in the UK.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Gee, ya think that was going to happen?!?

Theresa May has the morals of a dead tree-stump; MI5 and MI 6 know precisely that UK's weaponry is being used to assassinate Palestinians; but as long as the money is getting raked in by the UK's military /Industrial Complex, the British government chooses to remain collectively deaf and blind to the carnage these weaons are causing.

In late January, Turkey launched a ground incursion named Operation Olive Branch in the Afrin canton of northern Syria. The offensive is directed against the Kurdish-led Democratic Union Party in Syria (PYD), particularly its armed wing named People’s Protection Units (YPG), which Ankara considers as a terrorist group since 1985 and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) positions surrounding the city of Afrin. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that the aim of the operation was to give Afrin back to its rightful owners, a statement that has since been used by Kurdish group to claim that he intends to engineer a demographic shift. However, by March, Turkish troops took control of Syria’s Afrin region, deploying “police force” to oversee 115 “strategic forces” and more than 80 villages under its control, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

Your head chopper heros are apparently not what Syrians have in mind when they think of democratic revolution.

Mehdi Hasan (MH) can hardly be blamed for the ignorance that he displays in his Intercept article, “Dear Bashar al-Assad Apologists: Your Hero Is a War Criminal Even If He Didn’t Gas Syrians.” He has apparently never been to Syria, doesn’t often do research on Syria, and gets his information from proponents of a single point of view, representing a bunch of idealists that want to usher in their idea of a liberal democracy in Syria, without benefit of electoral niceties until their power is already ironclad. What’s wrong with this picture?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start by deconstructing the absurdities and the language in the MH article.

Will the Russian president and foreign minister continue to speak of “our Western partners” and seek common ground with proven lawless war criminals? What would that common ground be?

How can other governments accept the US, UK, and French governments that intentionally lied about a Russian chemical attack on the Skripals and about a Syrian chemical attack on Douma, risking a third world war, and then themselves attacking Syria on the basis of a transparent lie unsupported by any evidence? How exactly do you conduct diplomatic relations with war criminals?

You don’t. You put them on trial. Why aren’t Trump, May, and Macron on trial?

The reason is that the world has been conditioned, like Pavlov’s dogs, to expect and accept the West’s war crimes as ordinary common features of life. The West’s crimes are protected by precedents established by decades of failing to hold the West accountable. The West has squatters rights in committing unaccountable war crimes.

Webmaster's Commentary:

It is only a matter of time before the US will find itself in a military confrontation with Russia; that is being engineered by those in the US Deep State as I type this.

The US Secretary of War James Mattis is prepared to lead the US military into war with Russia based on nothing more than his belief that the Syrian government used chlorine gas against civilians,while admitting there’s no evidence that this is what happened.

Here is “Mad Dog” Mattis, the US Secretary of War, stating that he has no evidence that there was a chemical weapons attack in Syria last week, but that he personally believes that there was one.

I remember when a person who claimed to believe something for which there was no evidence was either a religious fanatic or an ideologue. No serious person would express a conviction when there was no evidence to support it.

This raises questions as to Mattis’ fitness for office. He is prepared to lead the US into war with Russia based on nothing but his belief. This is insanity.

What’s happening now is what is happening every week, sometimes everyday, since nearly nine years”, explains Belal Tamimi, a resident of the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. “Every Friday, we have this situation, the soldiers try to surround the village, they don’t want anyone to be near the spring area that the settlers occupied nine years ago. Every Friday, the situation is horrible”, says Belal, who has taken the role of documenting the protests and the constant raids by the Israeli army.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The "Final Solution" wanted by Tel Aviv against the Palestinians, is complete extermination and anihillation of all Palestinians, as is witnessed by these invasions and occupations.

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), the Palestinian death toll since March 30, 2018 “has risen to 33, including 4 children and 1 photojournalist, and the number of those wounded has risen to 2,436, including 410 children, 66 women, 22 journalists and 9 paramedics.”

There have been no Israeli casualties.

According to PCHR, on Friday, April 20th, Israeli snipers “killed 4 Palestinian civilians, including a child, and wounded 274 others, including 41 children, 6 women and 1 journalist, in addition to hundreds suffering tear gas inhalation, including PCHR’s fieldworkers who were documenting the Israeli forces’ suppression of the entirely peaceful demonstrations near the border fence with Israel, east of the Gaza Strip.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

And the world reacts to these assassinations and outright genocide.... with a yawn.

Israeli education minister Naftali Bennett was asked on Sunday if Israel had not gone too far when it killed Ayoub, as Orly Noy reports at +972:

Army Radio morning show host Razi Barkai asked Education Minister Naftali Bennett if “we had gone too far” in killing 15-year-old Mohammed Ayoub during the Gaza return march protests last Friday.

“If he had gone to school like every other kid,” Bennett responded, “there wouldn’t have been a problem.” That is what Israel’s education minister had to say about the murder of a child – killed by a sniper’s bullet – during a protest.

This is now a theme of Israeli propaganda surrounding the killings in Gaza: the children are to blame for not being in school, or not reading books.

Webmaster's Commentary:

In Israel, where genocide against Palestinian children is considered business as usual, there appears to be a real disconnect between what the snipers are doing, and their killing of children with bullets, when all the Palestinian kids have are rocks to throw.

But then, what can one reasonably expect from a viciously apartheid, self-proclaimed theocracy with nuclear weapons?!?

Russia may hand over its powerful S-300 missile defense system to Syria in the near future, despite opposition from Israel and other Western powers, the Russian daily Kommersant reported Monday, citing anonymous military sources.

The sources told the newspaper that if Israel tried to destroy the anti-aircraft batteries — as analysts have indicated Israel likely would — it would be “catastrophic for all sides.”

But Russian Foreign Minister later said no decision had yet been made on whether to give the S-300s to Syria, and added that it would not keep such a delivery a secret.

Webmaster's Commentary:

My sense is that Putin will make the decision, and soon, to send the S-300 Defensive Missle System to Syria, and soon; if Israel's government decides to send missiles against it, Russia has told it precisely what will happen.

Mattis and Dunford have open hearings at the Armed Services Committees, but will talk over their $686.1 billion request with House appropriators in private.

For the first time in at least eight years, House appropriators will grill the Pentagon’s top civilian and uniformed leader about their budget request behind closed doors, not in an open hearing.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford will sit before the defense subcommittee on Wednesday to talk over the military’s $686.1 billion request for 2019. It’s not the largest defense budget ever, but the $80 billion bump over legislated spending caps and the bipartisan budget deal that delivered that figure both represent a massive victory for Pentagon leaders and Congressional defense hawks.

Where those dollars will go, however, will be discussed in a session closed to the public.

Webmaster's Commentary:

So, We the People, are too stupid to be informed about where these defense dollars are going?!?

Folks, if this intel is true, the Unhinged, Surveilled States of Amerika has bounced out of being a Democratic Republic, and slid right straight down, in the mud, into a Banana Republic!!

The Senate’s debate over Gina Haspel’s confirmation as CIA director is poised to be a bitter litigation of one of the most controversial episodes in recent U.S. history.

Haspel, the CIA’s deputy director, is indelibly tied to the agency’s use of harsh interrogation techniques after the Sept. 11 attacks. But she is also a 33-year intelligence veteran who is seen even by some critics of President Trump as an experienced and apolitical hand.

Hinting at the challenge ahead, the CIA is engaged in an extraordinarily public campaign to burnish Haspel’s image and correct what it says is a swath of inaccurate reporting about a career intelligence officer who, up until a year ago, was virtually anonymous.

There are few obvious parallels to Haspel’s nomination. Although there have been a handful of CIA nominees with operational experience at the agency before now, many of them had been in the public arena prior to their nomination. Haspel remained undercover until last year.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Haspel is the last person in this country who should have been nominated for this position; this signals to me that the acceptance of torture, courtesy of the CIA, will be back as a brutal element of the Unhinged, Surveilled State of America's further wars without end.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is mulling job offers from at least one mainstream media network television news team and two law firms who would hire the embattled public servant as a partner, according to sources in the Justice Department.

The problem is Rosenstein still employed by the Justice Department.

Perhaps not for long.

But he might be looking for a way to parachute out before he is fired by President Trump. Or have a landing pad in case he is fired.

Speaking on Tuesday, President Trump again threatened to withdraw from the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran. Trump previously set an ultimatum of May 12 for withdrawing if the deal isn’t changed substantially. Trump also threatened to make Iran “pay a price like few countries have ever paid.”

The May 12 deadline is when President Trump would have to extend sanctions relief from the deal. Without that, the US would effectively be withdrawing. Iranian officials have made clear if that happens, they’ll resume uranium enrichment they’d stopped under the pact.

The three EU parties to the deal have been trying to come up with a sideline agreement with the US to prevent all this. So far, President Trump appears unwilling to budge. French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to join Trump in opposing the deal’s continuation, backing a joint statement from the two calling the current deal “insane.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

The folks at the IAEA, who are inspecting Iran's sites, and tell the world that they are totally in compliance with the deal, are not idiots; they are very bright, accomplished people, and when they tell me that Iran is in compliance, my tendency, as someone who appreciates science, is to believe them.

Unfortunately, however, Israel wants Syria; Iran; and Lebanon regime changed, but ony wants the costs of these military campaigns to be borne in American blood and American money.

And whatever President Trump believes Israeli Prime Minister wants, he will give that to him, delivered on a silver platter if possible, no matter the costs to We the People.

Just a month after another brief public flirtation with the idea of withdrawing from Syria, President Trump once again said he wants US troops out of Syria, promising “big decisions” very soon. His first talk of a pullout was scrapped days later. This time, he backtracked almost instantly.

With French President Emmanuel Macron in tow, Trump told reporters that he and his allies are taking a long-term approach to Syria, and that this would involve leaving “a strong and lasting footprint” within Syria. He said talk of the long-term issues in Syria was “a very big part” of his discussions with Macron.

The idea that Macron is driving Trump’s decision-making was a big issue last week. Macron claimed credit for Trump agreeing to stay in Syria, but quickly reversed course, and insisted the two had always agreed on the issue.

Webmaster's Commentary:

My sense is that the US involvement with Syria is not over by a long shot; and there is a grave concern that the US will wind up making a "military miscalculation", and involving Russia in a shooting war here.

Yemen’s Defense Ministry has vowed a “crushing response” to the assassination of a senior official from the Houthi Ansarullah movement, saying Saudi Arabia and the US will regret their “criminal adventurism.”

In a statement carried by the official Saba news agency on Monday, the ministry stressed that the Yemeni armed forces reserve the right to deal severe blows to “the aggressors and their evil coalition,” who will not be safe from ballistic missiles.

Saleh al-Samad, the chairman of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, lost his life in Saudi airstrikes that targeted his residence in the Red Sea port city of Hudaydah on Thursday.

The council was formed by the Houthi movement and the General People’s Congress Party to run state affairs in the absence of an effective government in 2016, a year after the Saudi regime and a coalition of its allies began their US-backed war against the country.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Were I either a Saudi or US military commander on the ground in Yemen, I would tend to take these people at their word.

Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo speaks during his confirmation hearing before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill, on April 12, 2018 in Washington, DC. President Trump nominated Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. Mark Wilson/Getty Images/AFP

United States’ President, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, narrowly won approval from a Senate panel Monday, paving the way for the CIA director to become America’s top diplomat.

A dramatic last-minute flip by Republican Senator Rand Paul, who for weeks had expressed opposition to Pompeo over his stance on the Iraq war and surveillance issues, gave the spy chief a narrow edge.

That allowed Trump to avoid an embarrassing setback as he sought to replace Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state he fired in March.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Pompeo's appointment, with Senate confirmation, guarantees that the wars will continue, unabated, and that the US/Military Industrial complex will get everything it wants, no matter if it actually works, or not, for our military.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is now facing possible criminal charges for lying under oath about leaks he made to The Wall Street Journal in 2016, in an effort to salvage his reputation and give his account to journalists who were questioning whether he gave a “stand-down” order to FBI agents investigating the Clinton Foundation.

Multiple former FBI officials, along with a Congressional official, say that while there may have been internal squabbling over the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation at the time, there was allegedly another “stand-down” order by McCabe regarding the opening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of her private email for official government business.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Drip, Drip, Drip!!

And now, with the Demos having filed one of the most insane lawsuits to hit an American court in recent times, the following bit of blowback has already occurred:

There has been documented evidence that the HPV vaccine has caused more injuries than any other vaccination in history. Despite this evidence however, the HPV vaccination has continued to be hailed a success by the pharmaceutical industry and governments alike.

According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) VigiAccess database, as of April 09, 2018, a total of 85,329 reports of adverse reactions have been filed regarding the HPV vaccination. These reports include 37,699 reports of nervous system disorders; 2450 cardiac disorders, (including 38 cardiac arrests) 533 reports of Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS); over 3200 reports of seizures or epilepsy, 8453 syncope, and 389 deaths.

As bank IT system revamps go, few have been as disastrous as UK bank TSB’s latest system upgrade, which began on Friday, was supposed to be up and running by Monday morning, but is still down on Tuesday evening. It’s now Day Five of the crisis and an estimated 1.9 million TSB customers still cannot use the bank’s online service. According to customer testimonials featured on The Guardian, some cannot even withdraw cash with their ATM card or their credit cards.

One TSB customer was reportedly given access to another customer’s £35,000 savings account, £11,000 Isa, and a business account when he logged onto his online banking account on Monday night — an allegation the bank denies. “There’s been no data breach whatsoever. I can categorically say that customers’ data is safe,” said the bank’s CEO, Paul Pester. Judging by the tone of some of their tweets and comments, the customers are not wholly convinced.

Webmaster's Commentary:

THIS is why....one only has as much money in the bank as is needed to pay your bills.

If you thought America’s overseas wars had reached their limit - think again.

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is building a new $110 million drone base in Niger, adding to its existing footprint of more than 800 military bases in more than 70 countries, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

On Monday, the AP detailed in a report that the U.S. Air Force is constructing a base for weaponized drones, the newest front in America’s expanding foreign wars “against the growing extremist threat in Africa’s vast Sahel region.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

One has to wonder; just how many Niger, and other African citizens, the US military intends to assassinate via drone strike, in its unending quest to expropriate raw materials and resources to which the US government has utterly no moral right?!?!?

For months conservative and right-leaning websites have been complaining that all the social media giants — Google, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter — have been downgrading, banning, or otherwise censoring their content.

For just as long the social media behemoths have been denying it’s happening, despite research and evidence that says otherwise.

Now, a class-action lawsuit filed by former Google employee James Damore claims that a senior engineer at the company pressured officials to sabotage President Donald J. Trump’s Android phone.

Altman, according to evidence provided in the suit, implores the tech giant to use the “full economic force [of] Google for good” by, in part, deleting the Gmail accounts of the president, his administration, and their aides for “abuse.”

A twenty-four-year-old medical marijuana patient in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, spent ten days behind bars after a blood test showed THC in his system despite his legal use of the plant.

CBS Pittsburgh reports that Sampson Bailey was in court on unrelated charges from last year related to credit card fraud when an unnamed judge speculated that he was high and demanded that he take a drug test. Though Bailey denies showing up in court under the influence of cannabis, his test came up positive for THC (even one single use of cannabis stays in the system for at least one to two days, meaning the positive test result did not prove he was actually high in court).

Webmaster's Commentary:

One has to wonder just how many pharaceutical companies are in this judge's portfolio; obviously, they have a very limited understanding of US law, where one is innocent until proven guilty, but ascribes to the polar opposite, now known as Code Napoleon Law, where one was presumed guilty until proven innocent.

A couple of years after it happened, Australian citizens are finally being (indirectly) informed their government harvested cell site location info to track their daily activities. This isn't the work of an intelligence agency or a secretive law enforcement effort. Instead, it's an (unannounced) partnership between the Australian Bureau of Statistics (which handles the Australian Census) and a cellphone service provider. The provider apparently willingly turned over cell site info without a court demand, government mandate, or consultation with its customers. Asher Wolf has the details at Medium:

The ABS claims population estimates have a “major data gap” and so they’ve been a busy bee figuring out a way to track crowd movement. Their solution? Mobile device user data.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Never say anything on a cell phone you don't want to be tracked; keep your Facebook/Messenger/Emails vanilla.

Citizens of technologically advanced countries nowhave no rights to prevent this astonishing level of surveillance, and the datamining which follows.

I write a lot about how, in a political environment that is saturated in disinformation and propaganda, it’s important to ignore people’s words and watch their actions instead to get a clear picture of what’s really happening. You could not ask for a better illustration of this than the recent behavior of the mass media with regard to Syria.

The always excellent Moon of Alabama put out a piece yesterday detailing the immense deluge of attack editorials disguised as information that have been churned out recently about anyone who questions the establishment Syria narrative, including a single day in which no less than seven smear pieces were issued by prominent publications. Seven. In one day.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The following is a very interesting window on which companies own what in terms of presstitute media:

GE is part and parcel of the Unhinged, Surveilled States of Amerika's military industrial complex; therefore, any narrative regarding the reality that the US has NOT been invited to get rid of the Western-sponsored, trained, and funded Jihadis, but Russia has, will be squashed like a bug.

GE wants to see more and more wars against Syria, Russia, China, and Iran and whoever is on the Deep State (and Israel's) "To Regime Change" lists, and those lists are massive.

This is ultimately about who controls the oil in the Middle East, and in what monetary denominations that oil will be sold.

GE is right now in a massive management shakeup, due to lousy performance How GE went from American Icon to Astonishing Mess, and are desperate for something - ANYTHING - to get them out of it. Things are so bad, in fact, that it would be ridiculous for them not to want a war, to turn their flagging fortunes around.

But such a war comes at potentially great geopolitical, military, and fiscal risk to the Unhinged, Surveilled, States of America.

A further US military incursion into Syria will, undoubtedly, bring a military reaction from Russia, and this is where things could get...awkward and ugly in a heartbeat.

We are already hearing the Israeli government making noises, threatening Russia not to use its S-300 or S-400 Defensive system against their missile attacks in Syria, and insists that it will continue attacking Syria.

IF Israel attacks again, and is soundly trounced by these Russian defensive systems, you can almost bet Israel will be crying to the US government that they are being "unfairly attacked", and that the US has to back them up, millitarily, in Syria.

I would like to politely suggest to the Trump administration to not do this; our military doesn't have the troop strength, the weaponry, the manufacturing or the money to insure a positive outcome to a conventional war against Russia in Syria; and those are just the facts.

Corporations like GE or Microsoft do not care that the costs of such attacks will be primarily borne in blood and money by the US; they only care about their profit margins, and the leadership of both companies have had their consciences collectively surgically removed.

Speaking before the US Congress, Emmanuel Macron said that France is not going to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal — also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — which was signed in 2015.

The comment comes after statements from the US State Department and EU foreign police chief Federica Mogherini, who reiterated their commitment to the agreement.

Anyone claiming they are impervious to this sort of analysis and delivery of "content" is deluding themselves.

Maybe you've seen a notice like this when you log into your Facebook account:did you read it carefully? Please read the one I received:

Protecting Your Information

We understand the importance of keeping your data safe, because we sell it for billions of dollars to anyone with cash. We are making it easier for you to believe that you control which apps you share information with.

You can go to the Apps and Websites section of your settings anytime to see the apps and websites you've used Facebook to log into. You can also remove the ones you don't want connected to Facebook anymore. None of this makes any difference in how much data we collect about you, but we understand it makes you feel better to maintain the illusion of control.

North Korea’s mountain nuclear test site has collapsed, putting China and other nearby nations at unprecedented risk of radioactive exposure, two separate groups of Chinese scientists studying the issue have confirmed.

The collapse after five nuclear blasts may be why North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared last Friday that he would freeze the hermit state’s nuclear and missile tests and shut down the site, one researcher said.

The last five of Pyongyang’s six nuclear tests have all been carried out under Mount Mantap at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea’s northwest.

A research team led by Wen Lianxing, a geologist with the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, concluded the collapse occurred following the detonation last autumn of North Korea’s most powerful thermal nuclear warhead in a tunnel about 700 metres (2,296 feet) below the mountain’s peak.

The test turned the mountain into fragile fragments, the researchers found.

Webmaster's Commentary:

However this happened, the timing is fortuitous, regarding potential US/North Korean talks between President Kim Jung Un and President Trump, later this year.

Israel's Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Tuesday that his country would attack Russian S-300 air defence systems in Syria if they were used against Israeli targets.

His remarks came a day after the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Moscow could soon start to deliver S-300 systems to its ally Damascus, and cited a source as warning of "catastrophic" consequences if they were attacked.

"What's important to us is that the defensive weapons the Russians are giving Syria won't be used against us," Lieberman told the news website Ynet.

"If they're used against us, we'll act against them."

Russia and Syria signed an accord in 2010 for the S-300 system but the missiles have not been delivered because of Israeli pressure, according to Kommersant.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier this month that no decision had yet been taken on the S-300 missiles.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Translation: what Israel has just guaranteed is that a Russian self-defense unit, like the S-300, or S-400 will be used to take Israeli missiles down, if they are used against syria

When it comes to Israeli hubris in this instance, payback... will be a bear.

Western strikes on Syria were aimed at preventing human suffering by reducing the government's chemical weapons capabilities, UK Minister of State for the Middle East at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Alistair Burt said on Tuesday at the Brussels Conference Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region.

"The recent airstrikes carried by the United Kingdom, the US and France were carefully targeted. Their purpose was to prevent further human suffering by degrading the Syrian regime chemical weapons capabilities and to restore the international law that these weapons must not and should not be used," Burt said.

The official pointed out that London would continue to cooperate with the international community in order to hold those responsible for the chemical attacks to account.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The problem with that claim is that bombing chemical weapons facilities would have resulted in thousands of deaths from the resulting toxic cloud. That did not happen, thankfully, and OPCW experts have confirmed there are no traces of chemical weapons at the targets of the US/UK/French strikes.

Russia will hold a briefing at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Thursday, at which people who witnessed the process of staging the recent chemical incident in the Syrian town of Douma will be present, a spokesperson of Russia's Permanent Representation to the OPCW told Sputnik on Tuesday.

Earlier in the month, an 11-year-old Syrian boy named Hassan Diab and his father told the Rossiya 24 TV channel that children got food for featuring in a video that allegedly showed the outcome of what was being considered a chemical attack in Duma. On Sunday, Alexander Shulgin, Russia's permanent representative to the OPCW, said that he would do his utmost to organize the boy's visit to the OPCW so that he could to testify about the staged nature of the incident.

After unqualified reports emerged from Douma that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons against its own people, Western mainstream media once again said that Bashar Assad was guilty of war crimes. Any alternative accounts were simply dismissed as 'propaganda. Sputnik spoke to international relations expert Xavier Moreau for more.

Last week, the fact-finding mission of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) visited a site in the Damascus suburb of Douma to collect samples in connection with the alleged April 7 chemical attack.

Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff Col. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy has announced that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had confirmed that there were no chemical weapons found at the Barzeh research center in Damascus despite the US officials' claims.

The official further noted that thousands of people could have died if there was any chemical weapon on the sites that were attacked by the US-led coalition.

"Immediately after the attacks, many people who worked at these destroyed facilities and just bystanders without any protective equipment visited them. None of them got poisoned with toxic agents," Rudskoy said.

Much ink has been spilled recently about how economic sanctions have crushed the North Korean economy and brought its leader Kim Jong-un to the bargaining table. Not so fast. For starters, there wasn’t much to crush. Never mind. And, contrary to repeated conjectures by experts in international affairs, whatever there is of a North Korean economy appears to be quite stable.

Recently I have been hearing people talking about their Bucket List. It's some kind of a trendy-generation whatever it is called this time, Generation X, Millennial's..? Are we still on Millennial's? kind of thing, meaning it's weirder than two shotgun weddings at a Mormon funeral, with blind snake handlers for the after party. Also meaning they are awfully young to be having a correlative list of things to do before they die and I guess 'live' is not included for some reason.

In light of the recent Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Facebook is quickly becoming one of the world’s least trusted companies. A survey from the Ponemon Institute, a research group focused on data privacy and information security, shows that trust in Facebook has fallen 66 percent to where now only 28 percent of users believe the company is “committed to privacy.”